Parasite prevalence in a social host has colony-wide impacts on transcriptional activity and survival

Parasites pose significant challenges not only to individual hosts but also to entire social groups. We investigated the effects of parasitism by the cestode Anomotaenia brevis on colonies of its intermediate host, the ant Temnothorax nylanderi. We evaluated changes in worker and queen survival rates and transcriptional activity in the fat body of infected and uninfected workers, as well as in the parasite itself, in relation to infected worker prevalence and colony size. Cestode-infected workers are known to exhibit a significantly extended lifespan compared to uninfected workers. Here, we demonstrate that the survival rates of infected workers, uninfected queens, and uninfected workers decrease with increasing infected worker prevalence and increase with colony size. Transcriptomic analysis revealed stress-related signatures in all workers, regardless of infection status, as infection prevalence increased. Moreover, gene expression patterns, particularly in uninfected workers, were st..., , # Data from: Parasite prevalence in a social host has colony-wide impacts on transcriptional activity and survival

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.8cz8w9h3b](10.5061/dryad.8cz8w9h3b)

## Description of the data and file structure

**Transcriptomics data**

RNA was extracted using the Qiagen RNeasy extraction kit, RNA extraction failed for a single sample from an uninfected colony (colony F; table S1). We sent the rest of the samples to Novogene (Cambridge, UK) for mRNA library preparation using a NEBNext Ultra RNA Library Prep Kit. For cestode samples, a SMARTer amplification step was performed to accommodate low RNA content. The libraries were sequenced on an Illumina Novaseq 6000 in paired-end 150 bp mode, yielding a minimum of 9 Gb per sample. RNA-seq data for four of the uninfected workers were also utilized in Sistermans et al. (2023), which were obtained using the same protocol. 

We mapped the cestode RNA reads using STAR v 2.7.10b with default parameters (Dobin et al., 2013) onto a...,